The Internet provides access to a wide variety of information. For example, digital image files, video and/or audio files, as well as web page resources for particular subjects or particular news articles, are accessible over the Internet. With respect to web page resources, many of these resources are designed to facilitate the performing of particular functions, such as banking, booking hotel reservations, shopping, etc., or to provide structured information, such as on-line encyclopedias, movie databases, etc.
A variety of search engines are available for identifying particular web page resources accessible over the Internet. With the advent of tablet computers and smart phones, native applications that facilitate the performance of the same functions facilitated by the use of web page resources are now being provided in large numbers. Furthermore, many of these native applications also provide content that is not otherwise provided by web page resources, e.g., some native applications provide content that is only served by those native applications and there is no web-based counterpart.
A user's informational need may be satisfied by providing search results that identify either one (or both) of a particular web page resource or a native applications that facilitates the performance of the same functions facilitated by web page resource, or presents the same or very similar information as the web page resource. However, a user may also have an interest in native applications that do not have counterpart web page resources. The scoring of these two types of native applications may use different scoring signals, however, and thus the resulting relevance scores for a search query may not consistently convey to a user the corresponding relevance of the content of the deep-linked content for each native application type.